Conservative columnist Bryon York contended in an op-ed over the weekend that the lame duck Obama administration used the antiquated Logan Act as a pretext to “to entangle the new administration in a criminal investigation as soon as it walked in the door of the White House.”

The Logan Act, passed in 1799, prohibits private citizens from acting on behalf of the United States government in disputes with foreign governments.

No one has ever been prosecuted under the law, York wrote in a Sunday op-ed for the Washington Examiner.

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He argued former that then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates certainly knew it was common practice for incoming administration officials to communicate their polices to their foreign counterparts, so successful prosecution under the law itself was very unlikely, but it could be used to link the Trump administration to Russia via his former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

On Friday, Flynn pleaded guilty to one count of lying to federal investigators regarding conversations he had had with former Russian ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak in December, 2016.

The conversations involved sanctions placed on Russia by the Obama administration following the November election and a U.N. resolution targeting Israeli settlements in the West Bank, The Washington Post reported.

The Obama administration was monitoring Kislyak and recorded the calls.

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York wrote that “Yates (an Obama administration holdover) told Congress that the Logan Act was the first reason she intervened in the Flynn case — the reason FBI agents were sent to the White House to interview Flynn in the Trump administration’s early days.”

“It was that interview, held on Jan. 24, 2017, that ultimately led to Flynn’s guilty plea,” he added.

President Trump agrees with the assessment Flynn did nothing illegal except not being truthful with FBI agents about the phone calls.

“There was nothing to hide!” Trump tweeted.

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I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!

York noted that the details of Flynn’s conversations with Kislyak were leaked, illegally, by the Obama administration to Washington Post writer David Ignatius, which helped build the Trump-Russia narrative in the public’s mind all the more.

Ignatius wrote in a Jan 12, 2017, article for The Post that his source was a “senior U.S. government official.”

“What did Flynn say, and did it undercut the U.S. sanctions?” Ignatius asked.

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The proof is in the pudding regarding the Obama administration using the Logan Act as a pretense to investigate Trump, according to York.

“[W]hen it finally came time to charge Flynn with a crime, did prosecutors, armed with the transcripts of those Flynn-Kislyak conversations, choose to charge him with violating the Logan Act? Of course not,” the columnist wrote.

“But for the Obama team, the law had already served its purpose, months earlier, to entangle the new administration in a criminal investigation as soon as it walked in the door of the White House,” York concluded.